"Thank you! but I did not mean that either. Do you like no one but me?"

"I do not know anybody else."

"You have seen plenty of people."

"I do not know them, though. Not a bit. One thing I do not like. People talk so on the surface of things."

"Do you want them to go deep in an evening party?"

"It is not only in evening parties. If you want me to say what I think, Mrs. Wishart. It is the same always, if people come for morning calls, or if we go to them, or if we see them in the evening; people talk about nothing; nothing they care about."

"Nothing you care about."

"They do not seem to care about it either."

"Why do you suppose they talk it then?" Mrs. Wishart asked, amused.

"It seems to be a form they must go through," Lois said, laughing a little. "Perhaps they enjoy it, but they do not seem as if they did. And they laugh so incessantly,--some of them,--at what has no fun in it. That seems to be a